"(Fisher) was really focused on critiquing what he saw as a nostalgia politics. Some of that had to do with capital realism and hauntology, that we're all kind of haunted by these futures that never arrive...For the left accelerationist a lot of that at the time came out of a real rejection of a small scale folk politics that felt that it wasn't dealing with the world as it is...They were really critiquing a focus on local, focus on small, focus on co-ops...It was an insistence that no, you have to actually look at how the world is right now, which is that we live in this very globally interconnected, highly technologically advanced society and retreating into these older forms is a way of sort of escaping and trying to sidestep some of these more difficult political conversations."

Paraphrased from around the 23-minute mark.

This speaks to something I've run up against personally in my strife to make stronger communities, build locally, and improve the world in a ground up, local way. It works, but the amount of power remains profoundly small and dispersed.

I don't have a solution, not really, but I've found some contentment in thinking that Lao Tzu's idea of the 'philosopher king' may speak to a contemporary solution. If we accept the world as it is, then we must accept large institutions and highly consolidated power structures. We must accept government, global interdependency, and some amount of strife. Further, we then accept the need for the people in power or positions of political responsibility to make decisions that are wise, thoughtful, and make the world a better place. All of this is part of the conversation about how progressive social efforts can be accelerated.

I'm honestly impressed with AI. It's a tool, right? And it's useful?

I've built all of the functionality of this site in a few days of vibe-coding, and it's working totally fine. I can make small adjustments to the site with simple prompts, I can add significant updates to the site with bigger prompts. I can build on it, tear things down, and make meaningful revisions in only a few minutes with the Codex VSCode add-on.

I guess I'm impressed. I haven't found the limit of the power of this tool, and I'm eager to get better & better at the use of this tool.

Keeping tabs on mobility and future-of-motion signals. Favorite skim right now: BMW Group Technology Trend Radar.